Comforters? More like Troublemakers

Comforters? More like Troublemakers
Job 16: 1-17

When I take students through the book of Job in classes, I invite them to let me know the questions it raises for them, and usually someone asks, “So when we are ministering to people who are suffering like Job, what do we say to them if we want to avoid the mistakes of Job’s friends?” My response is that the book of Job has no answer to that question, nor is there much of an answer anywhere else in the Bible. That fact has a couple of implications. One is to raise the question of why we think we need to have something to say. The other is that there isn’t much that is useful to say. Words aren’t much use to people when they are going through Job’s experience. A friend of mine who is an alcoholic told me about a woman at an AA meeting who said that she was full of shame from having left her husband for another man and that the best thing anyone ever did for her was to come and stand next to her at an AA meeting—just stand there, nothing else. Sometimes standing next to someone may be the only thing and the best thing to do...